


between the lines of fear and blame

by boasamishipper



Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: 1990s, Bars and Pubs, Bedside Vigils, Blood and Injury, Established Relationship, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Canon, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 21:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20319538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boasamishipper/pseuds/boasamishipper
Summary: Out of all the things Maverick had expected to eventually kill him — getting caught in someone’s jetwash, being shot out of the sky, his plane’s engine exploding — getting shot by one of his students in a civilian bar didn’t even make the top ten.He never expected Ice to take a bullet for him, either.There's a first time for everything.





	between the lines of fear and blame

Their latest TOPGUN class had graduated two days prior, with Magpie and Raven beating out Cobra and Zulu by half a point. Cobra had taken the loss hard — which Maverick would have figured out even without Ice telling him, since Cobra hadn’t even bothered to show up for graduation. Maverick was a little worried about him, and Ice had noticed, which was why he’d insisted on going out that night. Not to the O Club, which was still full of their graduating class trading jeers and drinking up a storm, but to a civilian bar downtown with no pilots within a twenty mile radius.**  
**

“Hey.” Ice nudges him under the table, and Maverick looks up, startled out of his thoughts. “You’re going to pull a muscle if you stay that tense. Relax.”

Maverick snorts, because that’s just priceless. “You know, I never thought I’d see the day when the Iceman told me that I needed to loosen up.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Ice says, unfazed. He takes a pull of his beer. “Still thinking about Cobra?”

“Hard not to.”

Ice’s eyes soften. “I know,” he says, because he does know. Sometimes it still shocks him that his former rival now knows him better than anyone else — and had become more important to him than anyone else. “It’ll be okay, Mav. He’ll get over it.”

Maverick shrugs — not because he thinks Ice is wrong, but because he’s out with Ice and doesn’t really want to keep thinking about Cobra anymore. “You still heading to your parents’ house this weekend?”

“Yeah. Taylor’s coming up from Bakersfield, we’re driving together.” The corner of Ice’s mouth quirks upward. “All that means is we’ll be arguing about who gets to pick the music all the way to Santa Ana.”

“What, she’s not a fan of The Doors?”

“I listen to bands other than The Doors, thank you.”

“You listen to music that literally no one’s ever heard of, Kazansky. The Doors are the only good band you like.”

Ice rolls his eyes, but Maverick would have to be blind to miss the fondness in his expression. “Oh, excuse me. And what was it you liked to listen to again, Maverick? Bon Jovi? Def Leppard?”

“Def Leppard is _iconic,_ Ice, and I won’t sit here and listen to your slander—”

“Commander Mitchell?”

Maverick huffs an irritated sigh. “What?” he says, automatically turning around in his seat, but when he sees who had called his name, all of the air leaves his lungs at once.

Cobra is standing in the middle of the room, fifty feet away from him. His hair is greasy, dirty, like he hasn’t washed it in days, and he’s wearing his dress whites, but Maverick is more focused on the look of utter loathing on his face. And the gun in his hand.

“Cobra.” Maverick gets out of his chair and turns to face him completely. His pulse is hammering in his ears, but he somehow manages to stay calm. The entire bar has gone as silent as the grave. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious, _Commander?”_ Cobra’s sneer is fresh and ugly, like an open wound, and his grip on the gun does not waver. “I’m taking care of unfinished business.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Maverick notices that the bartender is dialing 911, which means he’s got to keep Cobra calm (and keep him from shooting anyone) until the police get here. “Cobra, listen.” The words stick in his throat from terror but he forces them out anyway. “You don’t want to do this. If you shoot me, they’ll throw you in jail for the rest of your life. You’re not thinking straight. Don’t throw your life away just because you’re upset.”

This, apparently, had been the wrong choice of words. “Upset?” Cobra repeats, his voice shrill. “You ruined my life! I should have been Top Gun — that half a point was _bullshit!_ That fucking cunt Magpie didn’t deserve the trophy; _I did!”_ His expression goes dark with rage, and he aims the gun directly at Maverick’s heart. “And if I can’t have it, then the least I can do is take care of the man who prevented me from getting it.”

“Cobra,” Maverick says desperately, trying to backpedal, trying to diffuse the situation, “Cobra, no, don’t do this, don’t—”

The gun goes off.

Something slams into his side, knocking him out of the way and into another table with the force of a speeding train. It hadn’t been the bullet, Maverick realizes once he gets his bearings back. The bullet hadn’t hit him, something else had, and that means—

Maverick’s heart stops cold.

Ice is standing in the same spot Maverick had been a moment before. His eyes are wide with shock. His hand is over his chest, like someone had just punched him, and he slowly retracts it, leaving a deep red stain behind.

_No. No, this can’t be happening. This is a nightmare, this can’t be happening, it can’t be—_

And then Ice collapses to the ground.

It’s not slow, and it’s not graceful. He just falls like all of his muscles have given out at once, like his legs no longer have the strength to keep him standing. He just falls, his head cracking against the linoleum, and everyone is staring at him, unmoving. No one can think. No one can breathe. Or maybe that’s just him.

And after that happens in the span of one uncomprehending second, and Ice does not move or make a sound, everything jumps back into play at once.

Cobra drops the gun with a clatter and makes a run for it, but he’s tackled to the ground before he even makes it to the door. Someone is screaming, a long, high-pitched scream that seems to go on forever, and still more people are sobbing, racing for the nearest exit, and Maverick throws himself forward, skidding across the floor on his knees to get to Ice.

Ice is lying spread-eagled on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He’s gone pale and his eyes are squeezed shut and he’s breathing too fast — but he’s still breathing, thank God, thank God — and in the span of a few seconds the blood has spread across his entire chest, staining his white shirt crimson. It’s real. It’s all painfully real.

“Ice! Oh God, oh God, Ice, hang on. Stay with me, Ice, everything’s going to be okay, just hang on.” Maverick shrugs off his leather jacket and presses it hard against the wound, and the strangled, keening noise Ice releases makes Maverick want to start sobbing in unison with everyone else. “Open your eyes, Ice. Come on, Kazansky, goddamn it, look at me! That’s an order!”

Ice’s eyes open at those words automatically, because even situations like these where everything has gone shit over teacups Tom Kazansky still follows every order to the letter. His gaze lands on Maverick, and inexplicably he seems to relax. “Mav,” he breathes, like his name is a magic word. A lifeline. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Maverick’s throat is so tight he can barely breathe, let alone speak. “Yeah, I’m okay. God — Jesus, Ice, what the fuck were you thinking? Why did you do that?”

Ice doesn’t seem to have heard anything past Maverick’s first sentence. He tries for a smile, but there’s a bit of blood bubbling up between his lips, and Maverick wants to throw up. “Good,” he mumbles. His eyes are fluttering shut. “That’s good.”

Maverick pushes down harder on the wound in an effort to force Ice to stay awake. “Hey,” he says once Ice’s eyes have opened again. “Talk to me, Ice. You didn’t — you didn’t tell me why you did that. You’ve gotta tell me why, Ice, please.”

“Because,” Ice says. His voice is so soft that Maverick can barely hear him over the commotion in the bar and the promise that the police and the ambulances are nearly there. “M’your wingman. Gotta…gotta protect you.”

Tears blur his vision, making it near impossible to see clearly. He wants to grab Ice by the shoulders and shake him, scream at him that Maverick’s life isn’t even worth a quarter of Ice’s, but all he says is, “Since when are you the dangerous one?”

“Not dangerous.” Ice is fading now, eyes growing duller as his gaze goes distant. His breathing is noisy and shallow, and Maverick can feel the sluggish beats of Ice’s heart even as the blood soaks through his jacket. “Necessary risk.”

Maverick chokes on a sob. “Ice,” he says, and he taps Ice on the cheek, grips his chin, tries to keep him looking up at Maverick even as his head starts lolling to the side and his eyes close again. “Hey. Stay with me, Ice. Just a few more minutes, man, come on. You’ve gotta stay with me, Ice, please.”

“M’right here,” Ice whispers, and then he goes still.

Terror takes him in a vice grip, making it impossible to breathe. “Ice?” Maverick fumbles for Ice’s throat, feeling for a pulse, which thrums faintly against his fingertips. Too faint. “No. No, no, no — wake up. Wake up, Ice.” Maverick jostles him, shaking Ice the way he knows he should never shake an injured person, but he doesn’t give a damn about proper procedure right now. “Come on, Ice. Come on! Don’t do this to me, Ice, stay with me. _Stay with me!”_

_Not him. Not him. God, please not him too._

Maverick is barely aware of anything, only firm hands — _not Ice’s_ is the only thing his brain registers — on his shoulders trying to pry him away, but he can’t let go, because if he lets go then Ice will slip away forever and he’ll be all alone again and—

“No, let go of me, I can’t leave him, I can’t—”

“Sir, you have to let him go,” says a voice from behind him, and suddenly he’s not even there anymore; he’s back in the ocean, the hot sun beating down on his back and Goose’s dead body in his arms. “You have to let him go, sir.”

“No.” Maverick’s sobbing so hard he can barely breathe. His grip tightens on the body in front of him — Goose’s, Ice’s; what does it matter? How many times will he lose the people he loves more than anything in the world? “No, please.”

But despite his best efforts, they take him away from Ice, who is immediately surrounded by paramedics poking and prodding at him, cutting away his shirt — _no,_ he wants to protest, _that’s his favorite, don’t do that_ — and applying a pressure bandage; strapping an oxygen mask over Ice’s too-pale face before setting up an IV.

“Sir,” says the same voice, and Maverick is finally able to focus on the face the voice belongs to. It’s a woman, maybe in her late thirties, a few inches shorter than him and her hair pulled into a ponytail. “Are you alright, sir? Were you injured?”

“No.” They’re lifting Ice up now, strapping him to a gurney, and he’s completely still, covered in blood. Lifeless. “Only him.”

Maverick makes to go after the gurney that’s being wheeled out the door, but a police officer stops him before he can get far. “Sir,” he says. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to need a statement.”

“No, I can’t — I can’t now, I have to go with him—”

“Sir,” says the police officer, who has the good grace to sound apologetic. Twenty feet away, a couple of cops have handcuffed Cobra and are escorting him out the door. He’s got bruises all over his face and his nose is broken. Maverick has never hated anyone more in his life. “Sir, I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

Through the window, Maverick can see the ambulance pulling out of the parking lot, sirens wailing, and all of the fight leaves him at once. “Alright,” he whispers. “Okay.”

* * *

Giving his statement to the police takes over an hour: over a goddamned hour of explaining who Cobra is, why he wanted to shoot Maverick, their jobs, their names, etcetera. He tries to include as many details as he can — anything that’ll help put Cobra away for the rest of his miserable life — but he keeps looking down at the blood on his hands (Ice’s blood) and trembling like a leaf and fighting the urge to throw up.

One of the cops takes pity on him afterwards, since Ice had driven them here and Maverick can’t drive a car, and she takes him to the hospital. The ride is painfully slow, each red light taking an eternity to pass, and Maverick can’t stop seeing the look of shock on Ice’s face, the way he’d fallen, how he’d looked Maverick in the eye and told him it had been a necessary risk. He chokes back a sob at the very thought.

“Was he a friend of yours?”

Maverick looks over at the cop. She’s young; looks like she’s barely old enough to drink. “What?”

“The man who got shot. Was he a friend of yours?”

Maverick’s throat goes tight. “Yeah,” he whispers. He and Ice might be in a relationship now — and have been for the last few months, which have been the best of Maverick’s life — but ‘friend’ is all that the police (and anyone who could potentially end their careers) get to know.

The quietly controlled bustle of the hospital is so overwhelming that Maverick almost makes a run for it, but he forces himself to keep breathing and wait for the police officer (Rollins, according to her name tag) to get the information from the receptionist. Maverick sits down hard in the nearest chair, ignoring the confused stares of the people around him.

“He’s been redlined up to surgery,” Rollins reports about five minutes later, and Maverick lets out a breath of relief, because surgery isn’t great, but that means Ice is still alive. He can handle anything if Ice is still alive. “They called his next of kin — his sister, I think? — but she says she won’t be able to make it here until sometime tomorrow morning.”

Maverick had figured as much. “I’ll call his parents,” he says, his voice hoarse. “They deserve to know too.” They deserve to hear it from him.

Rollins hesitates. “It’ll be a tricky surgery,” she admits. “They said the bullet shattered one of his ribs.”

The news turns Maverick’s stomach.

“Do you…do you want some company? I can stay with you, if you’d like.”

Maverick looks up again, meets her eyes. She goes red at the eye contact and shifts from foot to foot, but she looks like she means it. Still, he shakes his head. “Thanks,” he says, “but I’m alright. You can go.”

Rollins nods. “Alright,” she says softly. “I…I hope your friend will be okay.”

Maverick manages a weary smile. He appreciates the sentiment — and he hopes so too — but he’d watched Ice collapse to the ground and choke on his own blood and go as still as death. Blind faith isn’t going to be enough for him this time.

* * *

Maverick waits.

He fidgets in the chair, paces around the room, flips through the outdated magazines without taking anything in. The people in the waiting room come and go, and a nurse drops by occasionally with bits of news. Nothing good, but nothing bad either. There’s nothing for him to do but wait.

Taylor joins him in the early hours of the morning, her shirt half-buttoned and her blonde hair in a messy bun. “I got here as fast as I could,” she says, dropping down gracelessly in the chair next to him. She’s gripping her car keys like a lifeline, and they keep clacking against the other keys on the ring. “Mom and Dad are driving down now; I called them from Bakersfield. Is he — how is he?”

“He’s still in surgery.” Maverick scrubs a hand down his face. “I don’t — they haven’t told me anything else.”

“Jesus.” Taylor lets out an exhale like she’s been punched. “Oh, God. Maverick, what _happened?”_

He opens his mouth, closes it. Looks away, digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands hard enough to hurt. One of the paramedics had stopped by to give him back his jacket, which is stiff and crusted with Ice’s blood, and he’d taken one look at it and left to empty the contents of his stomach in the nearest trashcan. “He saved me,” he manages. “One of our students was going to shoot me, and Ice…he pushed me out of the way. He saved my life.” Tears well up in his eyes. “It should have been me.”

“Oh, Mav. Maverick, no.” Taylor wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close just like Ice always does, and he can’t help the tiny sob that escapes him. “He’s going to be fine,” she promises. “He’s going to be just fine. And when he wakes up, you can go in there and tell him to leave the heroic stunts to you next time.”

He doesn’t laugh. “He said it was a necessary risk,” he whispers. “I don’t…why?”

“Well,” Taylor says softly. “You would’ve done the same for him, wouldn’t you?”

Of course he would have. Especially considering that he should have been the one in surgery right now in the first place. “Yes.”

Taylor manages a shrug. “Well,” she says with a wet laugh. “There you have it.”

* * *

Bill and Jess Kazansky arrive with the sun, bringing with them a couple of thermoses of coffee and endless hugs for both Maverick and Taylor. Jess insists that Maverick go to the bathroom and wash up while Taylor catches them up on everything she knows, and Maverick goes. When he returns, having splashed some cold water on his face and scrubbed the remaining blood off his hands, he feels marginally better, but his heart instantly takes refuge somewhere in his kidneys when he hears the words, “Family of Thomas Kazansky?”

Bill, Jess, and Taylor stand up, and Maverick moves on unsteady legs to join them. “He’s our son,” Bill is saying to the doctor. “How is he?”

The doctor inhales slightly, and Maverick’s heart stutters. It can’t end like this. Ice can’t have died like this. Not when things between them have only just begun, not when there’s so much he still has to say. Not like this. _Please, God, not like this._

“It was a difficult surgery,” the doctor says, almost by way of confession. “But we think he’s going to make it.”

It’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. Taylor and Bill give twin sighs of relief, and Jess whispers, “Thank God.” Only Maverick’s tenuous grip on his composure keeps him from bursting into tears. Ice is alive. He’s still alive.

The doctor has a litany of news to share after that, most of it less than good. Ice’s condition is critical, and they have to watch him closely for the next couple of days to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. They’d taken out his spleen, and there’s a chest tube in place, but they’re hopeful that none of the bone fragments had gotten into his bloodstream.

When the Kazanskys finally leave the ICU, Maverick almost doesn’t get allowed in. Family only, or so says the doctor. But Jess stares down the doctor (even though he’s about six inches taller than her) and informs him that Maverick has been waiting for hours and is part of the family, and he _will _be allowed to see her son, or there will be hell to pay. It’s a kindness he doesn’t deserve, but Maverick accepts it anyway.

Ice looks like hell. His normally tan skin is ashen, and there’s a tube taped down around his mouth, and his hair is sweaty and lies flat. His chest is partly covered by a blanket, but the tubes and wires that are keeping him alive are still visible. His hands are resting at his sides, pale and speckled with bits of blood that no one has cleaned off yet. Maverick’s heard that people who are comatose are supposed to look like they’re sleeping, but Ice is never this still when he sleeps. He’s always moving, trying to get comfortable, breathing without the aid of a machine. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

Still, he’s alive. That has to count for something.

Maverick sits down in the chair beside the bed. “Hey,” he whispers, his voice nearly breaking on the greeting. “Hey, Ice. It’s me.”

There’s no response. Of course there isn’t. But that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t hurt.

“You saved my life,” Maverick says. “I wish you hadn’t, but…”

_Real eloquent, Mitchell,_ he can hear Ice saying, and he manages a laugh at the thought of Ice’s mock-affronted expression. _I take a bullet for you and this is the thanks I get?_

“…thank you.” He reaches out, and after making sure that they’re alone, takes Ice’s hand in his. “Wake up, okay? Just…please wake up, Ice, and be okay.”

(Eventually, Ice will wake up. His recovery will be slow, but steady, and Maverick will stay by his side for every second of it. He’ll thank Ice for taking the bullet for him, but add in no uncertain terms that he’s never allowed to do it again; Ice will stubbornly maintain that it had been a necessary risk that he doesn’t regret, and reassure Maverick that one bullet wound is enough for him.)

For now, though, Maverick sits. He holds Ice’s hand. And he waits.


End file.
